Quotes from Samuel Butler

He had a good healthy sense of meum, and as little of tuum as he could help. Brought up much in the open air in one of the best situated and healthiest villages in England, his little limbs had fair play, and in those days children's brains were not overtasked as they now are; perhaps it was for this very reason that the boy showed an avidity to learn. At seven or eight years old he could read, write and sum better than any other boy of his age in the village. My

Not only is nothing good or ill but thinking makes it so, but nothing is at all, except in so far as thinking has made it so.

Let it suffice that George Pontifex did not consider himself fortunate, and he who does not consider himself fortunate is unfortunate.

certain kind of good fortune generally attends self-made men to the last. It is their children of the first, or first and second, generation who are in greater danger, for the race can no more repeat its most successful performances suddenly and without its ebbings and flowings of success than the individual can do so, and the more brilliant the success in any one generation, the greater as a general rule the subsequent exhaustion until time has been allowed for recovery.

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.

There are orphanages," he exclaimed to himself, "for children who have lost their parents — oh! why, why, why, are there no harbours of refuge for grown men who have not yet lost them?" And

Papas and mammas sometimes ask young men whether their intentions are honourable toward their daughters. I think young men might occasionally ask papas and mammas whether their intentions are honourable before they accept invitations to houses where there are still unmarried daughters.

we must judge men not so much by what they do, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to do.

a good deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part of parents towards children is not generally followed by ill consequences to the parents themselves. They may cast a gloom over their children's lives for many years without having to suffer anything that will hurt them. I should say, then, that it shows no great moral obliquity on the part of parents if within certain limits they make their children's lives a burden to them.

of prayer. And so am I under certain circumstances. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he has wisely refrained from saying whether they are good things or bad things. It might perhaps be as well if the world were to dream of, or even become wide awake to, some of the things that are being wrought by prayer. But

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

Loyalty is still the same Whether it win or lose the game True as a dial to the sun Although it be not shined upon.

To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.